process the breakup and move on

This is easier to say i’ll do than to actually do. Been a difficult week and its difficult even to get up this morning. Kinda sux. but i’m going to get out my list of what i wanted to accomplish this weekend and do them even tho i feel like crap.

Well i guess i started this one this morning by telling him how i felt and that i just wanted to be friends. I know i’ve hurt him but i have to be honest, it isnt fair to him if im not.

Am scared, sad, and a whole lot of other emotions but i will make it thru this…because i am a survivor.

My relationship ended just 2 days ago. I have never been more connected in every way with anyone in my life. I thought he felt the same way. He made me feel more special than anybody else up until 2 days ago. I have feelings of grief, depression, and anger. He took me to look at engagement rings last week, we had looked at houses, and he even talked about baby names. Then he broke up with me in a text message. No explanation, just, “sorry”. He got back with his ex. So there is no hope of reconciliation. The bad part is if he called tomorrow, I would take him back. He called his ex and told her he was going to break up with me before he even told (text) me. She was with him when he sent the message. I went to bed the night before and everything was fine, I thought. He said goodnight beautiful girlfriend of mine, I love you. I woke up to get ready for work the next morning and he had sent a text at 5:20 am. I guess it will just take time, but right now I feel like I will never get over him. It kills me to think of them together. She just lives 2 streets over from me, so I have already seen them together.

Not all bad, not all good. I’m considering myself as having moved on now. It’s not going to change and I’m done grieving over it. Here’s wishing both of us a lifetime of peace and happiness on our different paths.

This weekend as I was walking in the forest, I felt so centered and happy to be on my own. It was the first time I posed the question to myself about “What if he wanted to try it again?” and had real doubts about even wanting him back in my life at all. This isn’t to say I don’t still have sadness about him not being here. I do still have a sense of loss about what I thought we had. But I feel as though I’m moving on. This was helped by the fact that he has not responded to my last email. I only found that out when I came home from my trip yesterday. He can take as much time as he wants to. I’m not waiting for him anymore.

He emailed me today again and sounded all interested in what is going on with me and said he’d like to see me next weekend. My first reaction was, “no – it’s too soon.” But the reason it’s too soon is because there’s been no make-up process. He hasn’t apologized for the things he said about me. Which leads me to one of two conclusions: 1. He is not willing to apologize, or 2. He really feels that way about me. Since I don’t want to believe that he’s so stubborn that he wouldn’t apologize for things said in anger (although that would be the more hopeful choice), I am betting on the second. So I wrote him back and told him I don’t know how to “be” with him, that he didn’t paint a very pretty picture of me and I’m not sure why he’d want to spend time with me if he sees me that way. So we’ll see if he can handle this confrontation. I feel wary, on guard.

from my last entry? He wrote me for the first time since we broke up the same day I wrote that entry. He wanted to know how I was doing. I was surprised. I wasn’t expecting to hear from him. It was nice, but it did kind of unsettle me. Here I am, expecting nothing from him at all, and there he is, writing me an email that sounds like he cares. It makes me feel confused – if he really is “scared” by how “self-absorbed” I am, then why is he initiating contact? Why would you want to connect with someone you see in that light? Maybe he does want to be friends, after all. The ball is back in his court now.

I stumbled across a letter he wrote me around Christmas in which he told me how happy he was to have me in his life in the past year, and how I should never be afraid to talk to him about anything, and how he wanted an equal partnership, and how I’d never made him feel manipulated or anything. And how he wanted me to be able to count on him. Words words words. Maybe we should have had a discussion on what exactly we both meant by “equal relationship.” This was a really nice letter and it made me think today about all that we shared that was good. Despite everything, I believe that he is a good person and I will likely always have him in my heart.

It’s kind of weird to cut off all contact with someone you had so many things in common with. It was the only thing I could think of doing at the time. I thought it would be too confusing to try and be friends.

This is just me missing him today. I guess it doesn’t matter if I say what I wish about him now, since it’s over. I wish he had been able to understand my position on equalness, and that he could have talked to me about that one thing instead of bringing up everything that was my fault and what was wrong with me. I wish he had had some sense of what he wanted from his life and the motivation to move in that direction. I wish he had more friends and more things to do besides sitting in his house and going to work. I wish I could have had a chance to “cheer” him about things that he was doing on a bigger scale. I wish I could have been sure that the encouragement he gave me, which was unconditional, was truly from a place of love and not from a place of disinterest. I wish he would have read my letters more closely, because I said a lot of important stuff in them that was pretty straightforward (including addressing what I said in the previous sentence, to which he never responded.) I wish he could have understood that I “cut him some slack” for months and months and months, while I waited to see how he was going to figure out things for himself.

I am done wishing the crap about myself, like I wish I had unending patience, and that I could put my fears about financial matters, reciprocity, ultimate trust, and committment aside. But all of that sounds somewhat destructive to me, in the long run, and it’s not who I really am, and I don’t want to be a rescuer, and I want more from the biggest relationship in my life than that. Also, all the wishing I did above about him is destructive (in the context of a relationship) too, because you can’t change anyone.

It’s just puzzling to me. Perhaps it was a mistake on my part to think that he would be less apathetic about me than he was about other parts of his life. And thinking these things is what led me to the conclusion that we couldn’t really be friends, either, because I trust my friends in basic ways that I don’t him, because of things he’s said and done. If I wouldn’t put up with that stuff from my friends, why would I put up with it with my lover? I still think it’s a shame, though, and I wonder if in the future, we could try to be friends. Maybe now that my expectations of him have changed, maybe friendship is possible. But I’ve got to be realistic, too, and acknowledge the lack of friends in his life, and know that he might not want a friend, or might not be capable of having a friendship. It’s all so puzzling to me.

One last old wish – I wish he could have helped me understand how he works.

I realized yesterday that I’m not really much anticipating the conversation I’ve been waiting to have with someone in my life about the breakup. In fact, when I think about talking about it, it seems like it would require more energy than I’m interested in putting into it – why bother getting into all the details and analyzing when it doesn’t much matter anymore? The breakup event seems to be diminishing in importance, as are his caustic remarks.

It’s funny – I thought I was over it more than I am. I read over our last emails to each other today and found that they still smart quite a bit. I know it’s a process, like everything else, though. I’m impatient to stop feeling sad about it, but I guess I’m not ready to stop feeling sad yet – I miss him and the energy we had together. I wish he had been as committed as I was. It could never be the same again, not after his actions and words.